There is an old tradition that suggests that the Norfolk and Somerset
Ames came from the same stock. Portrait comparisons of Norfolk and
Somerset Ames have tended to support this impression.

The Norfolk line included Lancelot Ames in Norwich and William Ames in
Ipswich who were contemporaries in Elizabethan times. The Ames
line in Somerset included members of the Bruton branch which emigrated
to America.

Ames from Somerset to America

William
Ames
and his brother John emigrated to America from Bruton in Somerset in
1635 and
1638 respectively.Prior to their
departure, they had built the Pear Tree Cottage at Wyke Champflower
just
outside of Bruton.The cottage still
stands and has the date of building, 1633, carved into a log over the
fireplace
in the main part of the house.These
Ames are also commemorated in a window in the local church.

William came to
America on the Hercules in 1635,
settled in Braintree, and married Hannah Adams in 1640.They
had one son John who was seven when his
father died in 1654.He was adopted by
his uncle John who was living in Bridgewater nearby and was childless.

Reader Feedback - Ames from
Somerset
to America

Thank
you for your website on
John and William Ames which I just discovered by googling Pear
Tree Cottage. My wife has just completed a painting of the
house, taken from a photograph we took in the 1980's.

There are a couple of small errors in your
account. It was John who came first to
Massachusetts in 1635. His older brother William followed in
1638.
John died
childless and it is William and Hannah, as you said, who are the
progenitors of the family in America. Their
son John was adopted by his uncle John as you said. However
William and Hannah had six children,
not just John.

They were:

Hannah
- born March 1641

Rebecca
– August 1642

Lydia
- April 1645

John –
March 1647

Sarah
– Jan 1650

Deliverance
- December 1653.

John
Ames (fpceh@aol.com)

Rebecca Eames and
the Salem Witch Trials of 1692

At
the
age of 53 Rebecca Ames was among the spectators for Rev. George
Burroughs'
hanging on Gallows Hill, Salem, on August 19, 1692. She was
in a
house near the scene of the execution.While
she was there "the woman of the house" felt a pin stuck into her
foot, as she said. Rebecca, not being as good as she might
have
been, was pointed out as the one who did it.Two warrants were issued for her arrest.

She
was imprisoned for
witchcraft, stood trial, confessed, and was sentenced to
death. She
was reprieved in March 1693 after seven months in
jail. After her
husband's death, she applied for assistance and she and her children
were then
taken in during the winter of 1693-94.She
applied for and had her name cleared and restitution paid in 1710.

The Ames in Upstate New York

In
1804
Leonard Ames bought lot 62 in
Mexico in Oswego county, New York and moved his family there from
Connecticut.The parents and their four
children walked behind an ox team marking the trail on their journey.

When
the
Ames built their first home in Mexico, it had a sheepfold attached to
the
rear. Around 1815, daughter
Emeline put her hand in the cranberry bushes near the house and it
accidentally
landed on a bear who wasn’t pleased about it.To get across Salmon Creek, they crossed it on a fallen tree.When Cheney was young, a family story
described how he was nearly pulled into Salmon Creek by a large salmon
that he
had hooked. His sister grabbed him
by the coattails to keep him safe on the bank.

The
Ames, led by his wife
Minerva, were staunch Methodists.Orson
Ames, the eldest son who owned a nearby tannery, offered the use of it
to the
Methodists.Finally the 1833 the Mexico
Methodist Church was organized and a church built.Leonard Ames acted as trustee.

By
the 1830’s,
abolition became the official position of most pastors, including the
Methodists, in Mexico. Individuals got involved in the
Underground
Railroad.The house of Orson Ames, built
around 1830, was a well-known station on the Railroad.Orson sheltered the famous fugitive slave
Jerry Henry there in 1851.Harlow Ames’
cow-barn on the Colosse Road had beneath the floor, a pit, too shallow
for a
well or cistern, that is also believed to have been used as a slaves'
hideway.

The Ames Shovel Company

The Ames Shovel Company traces its origins to 1774 when
Captain John Ames began making iron shovels at Bridgewater in
Massachusetts.His son Oliver moved
the
company to North Easton in 1803. In 1844, the elder Ames would transfer
the
shovel business to two of his sons, Oakes and Oliver Jr.Within
the next few years, gold would be discovered in California and
Australia.This created a worldwide demand
for the
company's shovels.

For
most of the company’s history, it occupied the Ames Shovel Works in
Easton,
Massachusetts, where it rose to national prominence and eventually
controlled
60% the US shovel market.Along the way
it pioneered the concept of mass production and became one of the first
companies to operate on a global scale.Shovel production at Easton continued until 1952.

The Ames at Borderland

In
1906
the artist and suffragist Blanche Ames and her botanist husband Oakes
purchased
land on the border of the Sharon and Easton townships in
Massachusetts. The
Ames decided that they wanted to farm the land and
turn the rest into a wildlife sanctuary. New dams were
constructed and a lot of
the swampy areas of Borderland were transformed into ponds.
Construction on a
three-story, twenty-room stone mansion on the property began in
1910.
Today the
mansion is largely covered in ivy and sits behind a sprawling lush,
green lawn
and hedges.

The
country estate they created
and named Borderland remained in the
family for 65 years. In 1971, two years after the death of
Blanche Ames, the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts acquired the estate and opened it as a
state
park. The family mansion still stands. Its twenty rooms are
furnished much as
they were when the Ames lived here.Many
of Blanche Ames’ paintings grace the walls.